Dead Branch Removal In St. George, Ontario

Why Ash Changed Dead Branch Removal Here

The borer arrived in this watershed in 2010. The conservation authority has since taken more than sixteen thousand ash off its own land at a cost running into millions. Private ground was never counted and never cleared.

Borer-killed ash does not behave like other deadwood. The moisture goes out of it fast and brittleness spreads everywhere at once, limb and union and butt alike, and it separates at the joints rather than snapping partway along a limb.

That is a specific problem for dead branch removal, because the joint is exactly where a rope and a rigging line put their load, and it rules out ordinary dead branch removal on the tree entirely. Which is why a standing dead ash is worked from a bucket, flown off with a crane, or simply put on the floor from below.

Reading A Crown For Dead Branch Removal From The Lawn

In July, a limb carrying nothing while everything around it is green is finished. That is the one anybody can call.

Bark lifting away in plates and leaving smooth pale wood behind means it has been dead long enough to dry out.

Twigs that snap with a dry crack instead of bending. Green wood bends and dead wood does not.

Brackets of fungus on the limb, or worse, in the union where it joins the trunk. That is decay a long way advanced and it means the whole tree wants assessing rather than that one branch taken off.

On ash specifically, look for woodpecker damage and pale patches where bark has been stripped. That is birds working the larvae, and it is usually the first visible sign.

The Dead Branch Removal That Cannot Wait

A hanger has already broken; what it has not done is come down. It is snagged in the crown, propped on a limb below, or held up by nothing but a ribbon of bark.

Nothing predicts when one of those drops, and no dead branch removal schedule survives finding one. There is no way to make the ground beneath safe except to get it out, so keep people and cars from under it and ring the same day.

If it is touching a hydro line, or close to one, that belongs to the utility first and to us afterwards.

Why It Gets Left, And What That Costs

Dead branch removal is the job people postpone longest, and the reason is that deadwood gives no warning at all. It does not creak, lean, or shed leaves. It simply stays put until the connection at the trunk finally rots through, and that has no trigger and no season — plenty come down on still afternoons in July.

With ash there is a second cost to postponing dead branch removal. Each season the tree stands, it gets more brittle and the equipment needed gets bigger. The cheap window on a dead ash closes within about two or three years of it dying, and after that the price is set by the machine rather than the tree.